On Saturday the festival's website was hacked and replaced with a waving Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans.

The film was not supposed to be shown until the final Saturday of the festival.

It was shown last night as a replacement film for Blank City, which was pulled from the festival the week before it opened.

Police were present for the screening.

A number of films have been pulled from this year's MIFF at the last minute, including five Chinese language films - pulled in protest at the screening of The 10 Conditions of Love - and Ken Loach's new film Looking For Eric

In a post screening question and answer session the director Jeff Daniels said there were two main challenges in making the film, the first being gaining the trust of Rebiya Kadeer.

"It took three years to gain her trust," he says. "She was a bit dubious."

"Even up to the end she had her doubts.

"She saw that I was a stayer and through that I gained her trust."

Rebiya Kadeer didn't want the film to look at her family life

The second challenge was finding someone to put the Chinese point of view.

"I couldn't find any Chinese official to go in depth into who Rebiya Kadeer was," says

The film has been a long time in the making. Daniels originally spoke to the film's producers about the story in 2002.

Producer John Lewis says he has been disappointed at the reaction from Australia's public broadcasters to the documentary.

"They're moving further and further from their public broadcasting responsibilities," he says.

"We've been pitching this to the ABC and SBS for 2 years," he says. "We wanted it on TV for the Olympics."

The producers are still hoping that the ABC will screen the documentary.

Richard Moore says he's being contacted by documentary programmers all over the world who are interested in the documentary.

All the Melbourne International Film Festival screenings of The 10 Conditions of Love have sold out.